June 17, 2011

By Besty Brill and Ken Nopar in STEP Journal, directed to estate planning professionals. http://www.stepjournal.org/journal_archive/2011/step_journal_may_2011/the_charitable_giving.aspx. Little by little tax and legal professionals are coming to see that the wealthy very often want to have impact beyond self and family. How to have a conversation about aspiration and impact? Not easy for those whose training is limited to facts and figures. The skills needed are those of Socratic dialogue and thematic listening. Those who have such skills are generally found in public relations, advertising, proof reading, teaching, social work, fundrasing, or walking the streets looking for a job. We have, as culture, subodinated wisdom to profit and now our best hope is to teach "discernment" to tax, legal, and financial professionals. The strategic part of philanthropy can be taught by MBAs, and often is. The wisdom part? We are still treating giving as a consumer preference or proclivity. Questions like, "What does the community need? To whom are you responsible? What must we do to be saved? If not now when?" are syptomatic of a mind gone mad. I know it and accept it. The Wealth Bondage Private Duty Nurse has explained it to me in the process of getting my informed consent. I am lucky that lobotomy is covered, after the $1,000 deductible, by The Wealth Bondage Employee Health Plan. Under Obama Care it may not even need a doctor's permission. Employees will be authorized to provide the service themselves to qualified employees in their annual performance review.

March 04, 2008

On February 14, 2008, Peter Karoff gave a presentation for staff of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation entitled "Catechism for a Great Foundation," drawing on themes from his book, The World We Want: New Dimensions in Philanthropy and Social Change. In the presentation, Peter discussed the increasing intersection between the social and private sectors as a promising philanthropic model. He also addressed some of the challenges facing a great foundation, as well as its remarkable potential to transform philanthropy and effect societal change.

No one does it better than Peter when it comes to modulating among literary, ethical, civic, and practical considerations in philanthropy. Most of us are good at one aspect, or can play upon one theme. Peter moves effortlessly among many perpsectives, tonalities, and even genres. Anyone who works with clients around philanthropy can read this piece not just for the information, but as a model of how to educate and motivate resourceful funders in the art and science of impactful giving. I mean, would you have the audacity to provide a "Catechism on Philanthropy" to Bill Gates? Ok, it was a "Catechism for a Great Foundation," but still.

December 13, 2007

Host a Book Discussion - Bring a group together to delve deeper into the complex issues raised by the book. Download a list of discussion questions View an invitation to Associated Grant Makers' Book Discussion (August '07 in Boston) Invite Peter to Give a Motivational Speech - Hear directly from the author about his thoughts on social change, the role for philanthropy, and pick his brain about what it all means. Description, video, and transcript from The Boston Foundation's Kickoff Event (September '07)

Partner with TPI to Host a Workshop for Donors in Your Community - Thematic workshops allow participants to discuss their own thoughts, how they intersect with those presented in TWWW, and delve deeper into a particularly meaningful theme. View a list of workshop themesDescription of the workshop at The Minnesota Council on Foundations (November '07, led by Peter and TPI Senior Fellow, Amy Ellsworth).

Host a Private Event - Bring together a group of concerned citizens to discuss your goals for making a difference in your community. Read about the dinner for the President's Council on Civic Leadership (October '07, hosted by The Case Foundation in Washington D.C.)

Organize a Large-scale Community Event - When a community is ready to move from "We need to do something" to "We're ready to get started," bring all the players and stakeholders together to solicit feedback and create community ownership. Read about the 2-day event in St. Louis to support collaborative community action (December '07, hosted by the Business Journal and The Gateway Center for Giving)

Discuss the Book Over Breakfast We invite you to join us at TPI's office in downtown Boston at 9:00am on January 31, 2008 for a discussion of "The Power of Advocacy" (Chapter Four - The Listening Post: Reflection and Radical Change) Discussion topics will include: Is there an advantage in taking an inventory of basic human needs? What are the "commodities" essential to making your community a better place? Does advocacy play a role in your citizen or philanthropic efforts? If not, what holds you back? How does the role of government differ between Canada and the U.S.? Is it possible to replicate in the U.S. what the Maytree Foundation has accomplished? What are the advantages to a rational, "shoulder to the stone" approach versus ideology and sentiment? Contact Lucy Wolfe at lwolfe@tpi.org for more information about this event.

TBF and TPI host a reception and community discussion to formally launch a national book tour for The World We Want: New Dimensions in Philanthropy and Social Change
by Peter Karoff with Jane Maddox. The evening opens with welcoming
remarks from Paul Grogan, President and CEO of The Boston Foundation,
followed by commentary by the author, Peter Karoff, who is the founder
and board chairman of The Philanthropic Initiative, a nonprofit
consulting group that promotes philanthropy and advises donors on
strategic giving. Peter also engages in a conversation with John Abele
of Boston Scientific and The Argosy Foundation, one of the book's
distinguished contributors, to discuss themes and issues raised by this
significant addition to philanthropic discourse.

September 14, 2007

At Gifthub a meditation on "The Noble Nature" by Ben Jonson recalls Jonson's "Penshurst," and with it Peter's meditation on aristrocacy and democracy at Kykuit, the Rockefeller Mansion on the Hudson. Peter wrote a blurb for Jay Hughes new book, Family: A Compact Among the Generations, praising Jay for his citizenship, among other things. In that blurb, as in the poem about the Rockefellers, Peter's words go both ways at once, graciously praising what passes in America for Nobility, and yet tacitly asking it to go further, towards what one might call the real thing. The Colonel does chicken right. We have a long way to go, if we hope to do Aristocracy right. We will be lucky if we get somewhere close to Plutocracy with bogus patina. (You can quote me on that, a Fool at your service, Sire.)

August 28, 2007

In this recent talk to Forum of Regional Grantmakers, H. Peter Karoff asks, "Why not start a movement?" That may be the best question yet for anyone serious about instigating world change. I guess you don't even need to be a grantmaker to do that. More at Gifthub.

July 23, 2007

Imagine if Wikipedia were not a reference work but a change effort. Imagine if every hour
spent working on that was spent working for the world we want. And
imagine if we could choose the pieces to work on, contributing where we
can, unafraid to make mistakes and muddle through and sense the success
with nothing to lose and everything to gain…

Would that be philanthropy? Maybe not, maybe living generously would be a better description, living abundantly in community with others. Though maybe that is the root meaning of "philia," sometimes translated as "brotherly love." What Ted captures is that better world is not created as the Pharohs built pyramids, but as the bees build hives.

June 14, 2007

The book came out in February, and has had good response and a second printing. The public launch will be September 19th in Boston under theauspices of The Boston Foundation.The Literary Ventures Fund has organized an impressive media and promotion campaign and in the process the book is being redesigned, and the price reduced.

The book tour will begin in earnest in the fall and I am open to ideas and suggestions as to possible venues. My TPI colleagues have put together an exciting workshop series based on some of the major themes in the book. We piloted this notion - a talk about The World We Want anda workshop - in Toronto last week at the annual meeting of Foundations Philanthropic Canada, and it went well. We like the plan very much of taking these ideas and helping people put them into practice in their own communities.

We have also done the first three of a series of podcasts, two of which are based on a conversation with Melinda Marble - http://karoff.libsyn.com/ -and want to do more. Doing podcasts is suspiciously like having fun, and you are herby invited to join in with your comments at the link above.

Do readers have any suggestions on venues for conversations about the book, or stops for Peter on his book tour?

February 25, 2007

The virtual and online networks have great capacity for conversation,
but the sense of community in which action can be taken is more elusive.

That about sums it up. Within the world of The Philanthropic Initiative, it is about more than talk because the clients are generally large foundations or wealthy families. The budget, connections, board memberships, etc. are already in place, or within reach. The question is how best to leverage them for maximum effect. Online, among ordinary citizens, the resources are not so apparent. To go from talk to action by the many may require leadership and resources from the few. Convening that conversation from book to blog could be an interesting experiment in sociology.

February 17, 2007

Jane Maddox's post on The World We Want raises many interesting topics,
each of which could be teased out and discussed. The one uppermost on
my mind right now is the interaction of two elements as precursors of
meaningful action for social change:

Well wrought published materials growing from the well established world of books, community foundations, major funders, philanthropic consulting firms, local and national government, public policy institutions, funder networks, famous names, and major corporations, and their foundations.

Online conversation among many relative unknowns, without much money or influence, in a loosely distributed national and international network.

Online we talk about the wisdom of crowds, emergent democracy, the power of many, and
conversation as if these would automatically flow over into meaningful
and coordinated action. Yet so often we just talk while the world we have works itself out over our heads. How can we leverage
The World We Want
book, the blog, our online connections, including
Emerging Futures Network, and the real world figures and respected institutions in which Peter and Jane move, to create projects that elicit grassroots action towards shared ideals?

Jane - since you respond well to being put on the spot: Do you see the people at, say, Emerging Futures Network as anything more than buyers of the book, as an audience? Do you and Peter want more from them than $27 and polite applause?

If you do want or hope for more, what? Would the riffraff in the Dumpster get along with the people you interviewed? Or, are they worlds apart? So that the worlds they want will always be worlds apart? Can you see inviting members of both groups to a dinner party? A convening?

February 16, 2007

What a wonder it will be if The World We Want, New Dimensions in Philanthropy and Social Change helps enliven a conversation among citizens of all walks of life, all around the planet. It seems like a big expectation for one book. Luckily the conversation is already under way, here and elsewhere.

Why did Peter Karoff and I put our efforts into a book, anyway, instead of concentrating on a more interactive medium, a blog like this, with its democratic participation and often inspiring ideas? Well, the book enabled us to delve into the animas, motivations, fears and ambitions of more than 40 people (none sequestered and only a few, privileged) who are changing the world. It allowed us to use their own words to form a fairly vivid picture of how vision, insight and exhilarating work are burying old assumptions about what the world might yet become. It’s a struggle, their work, and not all of them are optimistic about where we (the planet and its creatures) are headed.

We wrote this book because the topic is so critical to so many people. Our goal, mine at least, I shouldn’t speak for Peter, has been to light a few fires and get a few more people worked up. And engaged in the promising dynamics of this flat old world, where bold new ideas are conceived, reshaped and redistributed thanks to new kinds of connections, communications and collaborations. But this explanation sounds a bit stilted, a bit general. The thrill has been in the details. Why did you, Jim O’Connell, (the street doctor who heads up Boston’s Healthcare for the Homeless --not sequestered not, privileged) coax that young speechless man out from a miserable life under the off ramp if he was only to return?

Back to why it’s a book. In editing “The Civically Engaged Reader,” Elizabeth Lynn and Adam Davis used Walt Whitman’s words— Books are to be call’d for, and supplied, on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half sleep, but, in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnasts struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself, must be on the alert, must himself of herself construct indeed ( or is that in deed?) the poem, argument, history metaphysical essay—the text furnishing the hints, the clue the start or framework.” Giving readers a chance to reflect on the world they want and the role they might play may be insufficient, but give us that it’s a reasonable place to start.

This book is common ground, neutral space for all kinds of community conversations that could build around it, but Jack Murrah, who we interviewed for his role in bringing Chattanooga back from the brink warned us that stimulating community dialogue that leads to action is a hard road. We decided, at least for now, simply to put the book out there. But it’s for all of us, physical and virtual.

The virtual and online networks have great capacity for conversation, but the sense of community in which action can be taken is more elusive. I suppose I’m passing the baton back to you all. And working up the courage to join in more often, at least when the references are not beyond me. But before I start referencing what’s not in the book, as you suggested Phil, why not start with the 254 pages of material that’s inside the cover?

I hope The World We Want will be widely read and discussed, not for the revenue to TPI, small change as you probably know, but for its message. Launching a book requires a long term strategy, I'm told. The World We Want, while published, has not been launched. It seems odd, but we will not be digging into it much until next summer. Parts of it may go online after that. For now I just wanted to thank you all (in too many words—ooops, sorry), to call back to Phil’s “ollyollyexenfree” and acknowledge Jim, Gerry, Harry, Ted, Brian, Tom and many others who care so deeply and contribute from (so deeply?) the dumpster and other digs. -Jane

February 11, 2007

The World We Want is an artifact, a residuum, of many conversations - between Peter Karoff with wealthy, well-known donors, and of Peter with himself, reflecting on what he has heard and learned in a lifetime working in sales, then as an entrepreneur, supporter of civil rights, poet, "founding father" of philanthropic consulting, and as a father, husband, neighbor, and citizen. The book is full of questions for discussion. But how can we awaken those questions so that the World We Want becomes a conversation among citizens from all walks of life, a cacophony, if necessary, but the voice of democracy, not just the voices of a sequestered and privileged elite, flattered by the attention of those who dare not raise the hard issues, lest they offend, lose access and be cast into the Dumpster of insignificant lives?

The leaders have passed on. They have vouchsafed their insights. They have been written up and respectfully preserved. But the world is no better off. Democracy seems as much in peril as ever. And tomorrow there will be other interviews for the famous, new celebrities, more vanities. How we come together to create the world we want is as much a question as it was when the project began.

I have thought hard about how to reawaken the conversation, now that the book has landed on my desk with a thump. If the editor, Jane Maddox, had permission from Peter and the publisher, perhaps she could delve back into the tons of material that have been cut, including essays and comments that did not make it into the book, and snippets from the conversations that did, and simply post provocative bits from day to day for conversation. Without the bits being online, it is hard to reference them, and hard to comment. With 25-200 word chunks online, perhaps we could attract the highly placed author of the bit, and those who might want to interact with her or him. Perhaps Jane could even email the famous person a "heads up" that his or her bit would be online, and that the public served by philanthropy was in danger of commenting, whether or not respectfully?

Of course two-way or many-to-many dialogue between the Prince and the Paupers would be world-changing. And that is the risk you run when you publish a book called, The World We Want and offer it to the general public. We have voices too, Peter and Jane. Do you want to interact with us or not? (Silence, by the way, means, "No." When you live in a Dumpster, you get very sensitive to the silence of those who avert their eyes as they walk by. We know what it means to be invisible and unheard. In the World We Want you stop to acknowledge our existence.)